Monday, April 13, 2015

Mon Apr 13th Todays News

On Bolt Report an ongoing policy is that any Islam post can only be on the pinned leader. Normal rules apply in that if it is merely foul and abusive it will be deleted. Otherwise comments are welcome. ===HR Clinton has announced she will run for the Presidency of the US. She is the doormat who hoodwinked the US to accept her husband after Gary Hart foundered. Now she announces this prospect on the anniversary of Democrats slaughtering Black people at the 1873 Colfax Massacre, and on the anniversary of the massacre of the Hadassah Medical convoy in 1948. A great way of remembering how Democrats take their constituents for granted. The Doormat is inoculating hostility by producing a logo which is awful. But don't criticise the logo and ignore the Doormat. The Doormat was fundamental to the failed Obama policy which has resurrected Islamic terror worldwide. She had despised the young democracies, and now has hostile civil wars for US peoples to face. She was the experience to Obama's youthful hope and change. She offers to the US the same deal ALP offers in Australia to the federal government. No policy. No vision. Insider trading and deals at the expense of constituents. While Obama was dancing with Beyonce during Benghazi, the Doormat was blaming a Coptic Christian for a video. One reason why the world contains suffering is the repeated lie of the past. Democrat is the party that exploits black people and minorities. But the repeated lie is that Democrat party is the one of choice for progressives. Yet if someone were to vote for a party representing prosperity they would vote GOP. Another repeated lie was present in a tv program from BBC four, entitled "Jerusalem, making of a holy city" by Simon Sebag Montefiore. It purports to tell a balanced story by leaving out salient points, it is propaganda that endorses terrorism. It makes as equal the democratic, international society of Israel which accepts Islamic peoples, and the xenophobic fascist dictatorship which murders people without trial. But it is from the BBC.

2014

A young woman, when I was a young man, asked if I would sing a bit of Handel's Messiah to her. She thought that she would recognise it. I had to explain I did not know all the various parts. However, on this day in Dublin in 1742, the piece debuted in all its' glory. Today is also the birthday of noted Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair. I don't think it means anything special about the day, but it is ironic. The day has a dark history. Democrats slaughtered blacks after they had surrendered to them in Louisiana in 1873. It was a GOP and Dem battle, and the Dem won and took for granted those they do today. It is telling that Bob Carr made a comment in his recent book which has been seized on by the KKK leadership. Sadly the connection is not tenuous between bigots or left wing parties. Also on this day, a discovery made in Poland caused a rift between the Polish government in exile and the USSR when mass graves of Polish POWs were found. The USSR was not an effectively run government or benevolent. It was a murderous dictatorship which, even so, was adored by starry eyed Hollywood types and impressionable fools. There is such thing as evil. The evil woman who was wife of Mao in 1975 commissioned the Chinese government to catalog all Christian activity in China. She confidently and proudly proclaimed that there was none, outside of graveyard or museums. No Christian was alive in China. Today, there are well over a hundred million with millions more every year. The Chinese government have nominated Christians as the only religion they will allow into their public service. And the only reference to Mrs Mao is at her grave, or in museums.

This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.

===For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - edLorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.

Tim Blair – Monday,April 13,2015 (5:25pm)

“When you clink them together,” emails PWAF, “the sound they make is tone deaf.” Speaking of which, take a look at this Hillary campaign poster, which provides a helpful reminder of one of her more recent lies:

Tim Blair – Monday,April 13,2015 (11:47am)

It is now 63 days since Liberal Party MPs voted on whether to hold a leadership spill. Although traumatic at the time, it now appears that this event may have been the best possible boost for the Abbott government.

“IF I was running al-Qa’ida in Iraq, I would
put a circle around March 2008 and pray as many times as possible, for a
victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.”
These prophetic words were uttered by John Howard less than 24 hours after Barack Obama announced he was running for US president.
Mr Howard was always the master of the understatement…
Back in 2008, Iran was run by a group of mad mullahs who vowed to wipe
Israel off the map in the most genocidal holocaust of all time… In order
to prevent these lunatics from ever gaining nuclear weapons, the West
put in place sanctions and vowed, if necessary, to bomb any nuclear
weapons facilities.
Then along came Obama. Now, not only do the Iranians no longer have to
worry about those pesky sanctions but, how good is this, they get to
keep all their centrifuges to build a nuclear energy program that can
churn out a vast nuclear arsenal at the flick of a switch.

... al-Qa’ida, rather than having been defeated, has now spawned a
grisly bunch of murderous offspring, from the schoolgirl kidnappers of
Boko Harem to the beheading psychopaths of ISIS. Obama drew a “red line”
that Syrian butcher Assad was not allowed to cross – using chemical
weapons – or the US would take action. So Assad used chemical weapons
and … Obama backed down…
Obama pulled our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite all the
military advice it was too soon. That retreat opened the gates of hell
and the evil of ISIS. Libya? Disaster. Yemen? Catastrophe. Somalia?
Hellhole. The list goes on…
Finally, there is Israel. The only democracy and only true, loyal friend the West has in the cesspit of the Middle East.
So what does Obama do? He turns his back on them and flirts with Palestinian terrorists instead.

Why on earth is the ABC spending our money on entertaining an audience in China?
Why is the ABC paying bribes?
Why is the ABC agreeing to Chinese censorship, and offering China a hostage in any dispute over its reporting back here?
Why does Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull continue to let the ABC run amok?
Joe Aston:

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is fast learning how to do business in the Middle Kingdom.
Not only has Aunty acceded to Communist Party censorship for its new
Mandarin-language website inside the Great Fire Wall of China, it also
knows how to pull a crowd of journalists to a product launch: cold hard
cash.
Yes, the Australian taxpayer handed over at least a dozen red envelopes
to local scribes at the launch of AustraliaPlus.cn on Thursday afternoon
in Shanghai, attended by ABC chairman Jim Spigelman and managing
director Mark Scott.
As all red envelopes in that part of the world are ... they were stuffed
with local currency, known colloquially as “red backs”. And just how
much did Scott stuff in their garters? The usual going rate is ¥200
($41) – the cost of a “return cab fare” (that old chestnut) – but
foreigners ordinarily pay more…
(T)he irony of the ABC – bastion of publicly funded autonomous
journalism – giving cash payments to journalists from privately funded
compliant media organisations…
Also in Aunty’s media goodie bag: a lavender bear from Tasmania…
An ABC spokesman says the only gift “that the ABC is aware of” is the
lavender bears, adding that the launch was managed by a locally-engaged
PR company. We asked if Aunty had bothered asking its PR firm about cash
gifts and we were told: “the comment is the comment”.

The bribes are bad enough. The rest is worse. So what will the Abbott Government do about it?

CHLOE Valentine wasn’t killed by just two ferals. Also guilty is the feral culture that millions of us helped create.
So it’s not enough that we’ve jailed Chloe’s mother, Ashlee Polkinghorne, and her brutal partner, Benjamin McPartland.
Nor is it enough the we blame South Australia’s child protection
service, Families SA, even though it was given 20 separate warnings that
Chloe was in danger yet — shockingly — did not save her.
No, we must confront the values we’ve allowed to take root that helped make modern Australia so toxic for this four-year-old.
The bare facts are now well known.
In 2012, Chloe was living at Ingle Farm with Polkinghorne and
McPartland, who thought it would be a great joke to force the
four-year-old to ride a motorbike three times her weight.
They made her ride it repeatedly over three days, even though she
couldn’t stop without falling off the bike, or under it. You can hear
them laughing at her in a video.
Chloe fell unconscious, but as coroner Mark Johns noted in his report
last week, Polkinghorne and McPartland waited more than eight hours to
call an ambulance, and meanwhile “occupied themselves by using Facebook,
doing some internet banking, searching the internet as to what to do
when a person was rendered unconscious, and smoked cannabis”.
Chloe died. A forensic pathologist said she’d seen such terrible bruising only once before, in an adult.
Coroner Johns’ report is passionate and critically important.
Read it, because it challenges many lethal conceits of a society that
increasingly values pleasure above duty, self above family, freedom
above responsibility.
First of all, of course, it exposes our farcical faith that government
officials can deal with the collapse of the family unit now that we’ve
destroyed social taboos against divorce, drugs and casual sex.
(Read the full column here.)

Treasurer Joe Hockey has warned the deficit could blow out again as
he prepares to write-off up to $25 billion more in revenue over the next
four years by factoring in an iron ore price as low as $35-a-tonne in
the May 12 budget.
The price, $25 lower than what was said to be a conservative forecast of
$60 contained in December’s budget update, will mean there is about
$6.25 billion less revenue a year than the government thought it had
just five months ago…
While promising the budget would contain a “credible path back to
surplus”, Mr Hockey again declined to nominate when a surplus could
eventuate, and he could not guarantee that the deficit, forecast in
December to be $40.4 billion this year and $31.2 billion next financial
year, would not worsen again…
Mr Hockey said the rapidly deteriorating budget bottom line meant the
government had no choice but to remain committed to the unpopular
structural savings in last year’s budget, such as cuts to welfare,
health and the growth of the pension, which were still stuck in the
Senate and worth $27 billion over four years.

And when revenue is slashed, it is clearly stupid to think that extra taxes are the answer.

Yet Labor’s answer is indeed to launch a vicious and deceitful attack on bosses, claiming they are dodging their taxes. Amanda Vanstone:

[Labor] Senator Sam Dastyari wants companies named and shamed. Can
you believe it? Who will decide which companies should be named and
shamed? What redress will there be if a mistake is made? Will we name
and shame them even if every move they have made has been lawful?…
It is a crude appeal to our baser hunt and kill instincts and makes a
mockery of the trust we are meant to have in the tax department keeping
our information secure…
This isn’t a simple matter of taking a company’s gross sales and
asserting that therefore enormous amounts of tax should have been paid.
For starters the gross sales reduce down to gross profit after the
deduction of cost of goods sold. Then there is a plethora of other tax
rules which come into action before we can calculate the taxable
income.... It also opens up a Pandora’s box of issues relating to
competition between countries.
Most of us recognise that Australia is an expensive place to do
business. Our unions want us to be paid more and more and then cry
guiltless tears when companies that can’t make a profit shut up shop and
get their goods made elsewhere. Salaries and conditions are a part of
the profit equation and we have a tough time competing with developing
countries.
Tax regimes are another part of the equation. If a country’s tax is much
higher than that in a neighbouring country, a company may well shift to
the neighbouring country to have more after-tax profit, either to
expand the business or pay to shareholders.
Labor’s sudden burst of interest in this area is simply designed to
cover up its hopelessness in office. Unfortunately, they are advocating
moving ahead of other countries which runs the risk of driving the
capital, and thus the jobs, overseas.

THE government has warned it will take at least another three years
to process 24,600 remaining asylum seekers who arrived under former
Labor governments with the rollout of tougher national security
assessments since the Sydney siege.
The blowout in the time to resolve the refugee legacy caseload will also
deliver a further hit to the May budget, it has been revealed.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed that more thorough ASIO
assessments in the wake of the Sydney siege would contribute to pushing
the expected processing of refugee claims of 24,600 asylum seekers to
beyond 2018.
In particular, ASIO will undertake more detailed document checking to
verify identification which in some cases can take months for just one
person…
Mr Dutton said future governments could still be dealing with the legacy
of the former Labor government’s failed border protection policy —
which had overseen the arrival of more than 50,000 people by boat during
its six years in power — for up to a decade.

What a shocking indictment of Labor’s border policies. And the Greens thought those policies were even too harsh.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)

When the slight global warming that occurred between 1970 and 2000 came
to a virtual standstill, ... something dire was needed to prop up the
climate disruption narrative. “Ocean acidification” was invented to
provide yet another apocalyptic scenario, only this one required no
warming or severe weather, just more CO2 in the atmosphere.
The story goes that as CO2 ­increases in the atmosphere the oceans will
absorb more of it and this will cause them to become acidic — well, not
exactly, but at least to become less basic. This in turn is predicted to
dissolve the coral reefs and kill the oysters, clams, mussels and algae
that have calcareous shells. It was named “global warming’s evil twin"…
How do I know that increased CO2 will not kill the coral reefs and shellfish? Let me count the ways…
First, contrary to popular ­belief, at 400 parts per million (0.04 per
cent), CO2 is lower now in the atmosphere than it has been during most
of the 550 million years since modern life forms emerged during the
Cambrian ­period. CO2 was about 10 times higher then than it is today.
Corals and shellfish evolved early and have obviously managed to survive through eras of much higher CO2 than present levels…
Second, due to its high concentration of basic elements such as calcium
and magnesium, sea­water has a powerful buffering ­capacity to prevent
large swings in pH due to the addition of CO2.
This self-correcting capacity of seawater will ensure the pH will remain
well within levels conducive to calcification, the process whereby
shells and coral structures are formed…
Third, and most interesting, there are freshwater species of clams and
mussels that manage to produce calcareous shells at pH 4-5, well into
the acidic range. They are able to do this because a mucous layer on
their shell allows them to control the pH near the surface and to make
calcification possible beneath the mucous layer…
Fourth, ocean acidification proponents invariably argue that increased
CO2 will also cause the oceans to warm due to a warming climate. Yet
they conveniently ­ignore the fact that when water warms the gases
dissolved in it tend to “outgas”.
It’s the same phenomenon that happens in a glass of cold water taken
from the fridge and placed on a counter at room temperature. The bubbles
that form on the ­inside of the glass as it warms are the gases that
were dissolved in the colder water. So in theory a warmer sea will have
less CO2 dissolved in it than a cooler one.

Proportional
representation in our upper houses has helped the strangest people
become politicians in what’s really a lottery. Good and decisive
government is becoming increasingly hard:

LEADER
of the shambolic No Land Tax micro party Peter Jones — who has
described himself as an “off-the-wall nutcase” — is on course to win an
eight-year spell in NSW’s Parliament.
The No Land Tax Party, which ran a topless model and salsa dancer among
its state election candidates and still owes staff about $1 million for
work on polling day, is ahead of the Liberal Party in the race for the
final seat in the Legislative Council.
However, Mr Jones’ predicted ascension to the upper house is unlikely to
prove a significant hurdle to Premier Mike Baird’s key election policy
on the sale of the state’s poles and wires, given he yesterday indicated
conditional support for the $20 billion sell-off funding NSW’s
infrastructure plan....
His party, which secured the Group A spot on the Legislative Council
ballot, has about 80,000 upper house votes with 70 per cent of the vote
counted. That represents about 2 per cent of the overall vote. That
would put No Land Tax on course to receive up to $240,000 in funding,
assuming Mr Jones gets in.
In recent comments to The Daily Telegraph, Mr Jones said: “I’m not just
your run of the mill psycho, I’m a complete off-the-wall nutcase."… The
party still owes money to a large number of the 3600 people to whom it
offered $30 an hour to hand out how to vote cards on election day. The
Fair Work Ombudsman is conducting inquiries.

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson will move today to reshape the national
debate on how to recognise First Australians, rejecting “symbolic”
changes to the Constitution and calling instead for a declaration of
recognition with no legal rights.
Arguing that the Constitution is not the right place for “poetry and
symbolism”, the Cape York leader will break from the consensus on reform
by urging that any wording on recognition be excluded from the
country’s founding document.
The move is a dramatic departure from the recommen­dations of the expert
panel advancing constitutional recognition — of which he was a member —
and adds a powerful voice to a campaign by conservatives to limit
symbolic language in the Constitution.
Mr Pearson will use a major speech today to argue that a declaration of
recognition would better express the importance of First Australians
while maintaining the conservative support essential for any successful
­referendum.

So far so good. But wait. Didn’t Parliament pass exactly such a motion already? From 2013:

Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is another step closer after the Bill for an Act of Recognition passed through the Senate unopposed this week.
This followed unanimous passage through the house of Representatives on 13 February 2013.
The Bill demonstrates the Parliament’s commitment to acknowledging
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique and special place
in our nation’s history.
“Firstly, it acknowledges in law that Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people are the first inhabitants of this nation,” Prime
Minister Julia Gillard said in her address to Parliament in February.
“It acknowledges they occupied this land from time immemorial – they honoured and cared for it, and do so to this day.

And Pearson is still preaching the politics of a racial divide - the real danger:

He will insist that his support for any declaration be conditional on it
being accompanied by practical constitutional reforms to give
indigenous Australians more say on how policies affect them. This could
include new parliamentary rules and procedures to give indigenous
Australians a “fair say in the parliamentary process” such as
representation in the Senate.
“If the Constitution is a rule book for government, then constitutional
recognition should do something about the rules governing indigenous
affairs in this country,” Mr Pearson says.

A group has claimed responsibility for
hacking the Hobart International Airport website and posting a statement
supporting the radical Islamist group ISIS, also known as Islamic State
...
Tasmania Police say messages identical to the one that appeared on the
site early Sunday morning have been posted on thousands of websites
worldwide since late 2014…
“There were no threats made towards the Hobart Airport or flight
operations to and from the airport,” the police statement said.

But it is so much easier to denounce a few people peacefully waving Australian flags.
Gerard Henderson:

The easiest way for a green-left supporter to get a seat [in the
audience of the ABC’s Q&A] is to claim to be a Coalition voter.
They get to fill part of the pro-­Coalition quota, an easier task than
competing for slots within the Labor and Green quotas.
So it came to pass on Easter Monday when the clear audience hero was
Vanessa “Van” Badham — cultural critic for the leftist Guardian
Australia…
Presenter Tony Jones led with his executive producer’s pick for the
first question. It was from Lea Vesic, who expressed concern at the
Reclaim Australia protests…
To the delight of the audience, Badham immediately weighed in ... [against] the supporters of “neo-Nazism and fascism”.
Badham added: “We have an extremist element on the very far Right. They
are tiny but they are feeling quite emboldened by a lot of divisive
language that’s been used against particularly the Muslim community and
in the debate around asylum-seekers."…
But, as Badham acknowledged, the contemporary lunar Right is tiny. Even
she conceded that in ­Melbourne the counter-protest movement outnumbered
the Reclaim Australia demonstrators by 10 to one.
When most Australians viewed the Reclaim Australia demonstration they
would­ have seen small groups of low-profile Australians complaining
about the growing prevalence of halal food here and railing against the
(remote) possibility that sharia law might be established in the
Antipodes. That was about it.
However, to Badham, ... “I was there to put my body in front of neo-Nazis and fascists…”
Contrary to Badham’s hyperbole, which enjoyed widespread acclaim from
the Q&A audience and was not contested by the presenter, there is
not — and never has been — a significant neo-Nazi or fascist movement in
Australia....
What Badham, Jones and the Q&A audience failed to observe is that,
while the intelligence ­security community monitors Left and Right
alike, it is only Islamists who presently are in prison for conspiracy
to commit acts of ­terrorism… But the leftist Badham won’t speak their
name on Q&A.

Bill Shorten has posted his worst
ratings as Labor leader, with more than half of voters dissatisfied with
his performance as Tony Abbott continues to claw back ground.
The latest Newspoll, taken exclusively for The Australian at the
weekend, shows the Coalition has opened a five-point margin over Labor
on primary vote to be ahead by 41 per cent to 36 per cent — its biggest
lead in seven months.The Coalition’s primary vote was steady while Labor
fell one point to a five-month low. The Greens were unchanged at 11 per
cent with support for others, which includes independents and minor
parties, up one point to 12 per cent.
With preferences from the Greens based on the last election, the ALP
continues to hold a two-party lead of 51 per cent to 49 per cent.

The question of the Liberal leadership could be revisited in months as
support for Tony Abbott’s government drifts south again… Mr Abbott’s
woes appear linked to the sinking popularity of his Treasurer Joe
Hockey, who as architect of the first politically toxic blueprint, has
suffered a massive 45 per cent reversal in his approval rating over the
last 13 months from plus 20 per cent in March 2014 to minus 25 now…
Bill Shorten’s Labor opposition has opened up an eight-point buffer on
two-party-preferred voting intention of 54 per cent to the Coalition on
46 per cent - a three-point deterioration for the government since last
month’s survey, which suggested Mr Abbott’s government was making a
comeback and was almost level-pegging with Labor at 49-51.

I can’t say I have much confidence in polls which yo-yo like that.
All I think we can sensibly conclude is that Abbott is still behind, and
by a margin somewhere between the two polls. And the Budget is
absolutely critical to his fortunes.
(Thanks to readers WaG311 and Peter of Bellevue Hill.)

Piers Akerman – Sunday,April 13,2014 (3:56am)

DRIVEN by what she calls “capitalist despair” Sydney documentary maker Anna Broinowski took a taxpayer-funded trip to the North ­Korean workers’ paradise ­returning with a her new work Aim High in Creation!

“Every time I turned on the news I’d see oil tankers washing up on pristine reefs, or a McDonald’s being built in a hospital, the mining giants doing whatever they wanted, and a coal seam gas mine had just been approved 200m from my house. It felt like capitalism was on steroids,” she said in one of many publicity interviews for her film.

With that sort of attitude and a TV locked onto the ABC, it is little wonder that she was reading a book on film directing written by dictator Kim Jong-Il, the second supreme leader of risibly called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, when she felt the urge to explore the North Korean propaganda production. Nor is it surprising that the North ­Korean masters welcomed to their studios Broinowski and producer Lizzette Atkins.

Funded by the Australian Government, the NSW ­Government, Screen NSW, the Victorian Government, Film Victoria Australia, the South Australian Government, Screen Australia and Unicorn Films, Broinowski was able to create her own anti-coal seam gas propaganda in the style of her North Korean hosts.

Though she claims awareness of North Korea’s horrific history of human rights ­abuses, it did not disabuse her of her goal, nor did it seem to interfere with her artistic drive.

“If you remove the brutality of the regime, which I didn’t see, it was serene and beautiful to be in a country with no ­internet, no advertising,” she told one interviewer.

“I’m not an apologist by any means. I know it’s an evil, ­repressive place as well, where 200,000 people are political prisoners and it’s brutal.

“However, I don’t think we’re getting the real story about the rest of North Korea. There was a purer, more innocent approach to fun than what we are used to in the jaded West.” Even the capital, Pyongyang “wasn’t the evil, diabolical place I had been led to expect,” she said.

Serendipitously, while Broinowski was honing her propaganda as a favourite of North Korea’s totalitarian regime, another Australian, former High Court Justice Michael Kirby, was putting the finishing touches on a UN report into human rights abuses in DPRK which recommended that its leadership be charged and referred to the International Criminal Court.

His commission found “an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association”.

His report finds it is an “all-encompassing indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood to propagate an ­official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader (Suryong), effectively to the exclusion of any thought independent of official ideology and State propaganda.

Propaganda, the report notes, is further used by the North Koreans to incite ­nationalistic hatred towards official enemies of the State, including Japan, the United States of America and the ­Republic of Korea, and their nationals. “Virtually all social activities undertaken by citizens of all ages are controlled by the Workers’ Party of Korea,” it says.

Those workers certainly know how to party, or at least, those favoured by the regime whom Broinowski was fraternising with do. She reports she drank copious quantities of Soju, local vodka, as she bonded with the cinematic crew.

As a foreigner and a woman, she was fortunate that her powerful friends were able to shield her from the sexual and gender-based violence endemic in the xenophobic state, where victims are afforded no protection from the State, any support services or recourse to justice.

According to the report, ­violations of the rights to food and to freedom of movement have resulted in women and girls becoming vulnerable to trafficking and increased ­engagement in transactional sex and prostitution.

One wonders what sort of small talk Broinowski engaged in as she tossed back the vodkas with her hosts.

Though hamburgers may seem scary to some Australian inner-urban dwellers, they don’t really compare with forced labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of ­reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide.

Perhaps there is a documentary to be made. If Broinowski is available, Justice Kirby has the script ready.

Last Saturday, The Sydney Morning Herald published the program for this year’s Sydney Writers Festival, which will begin on May 19… This year’s festival will host some important international writers, in addition to homegrown talent such as David Malouf and Thomas Keneally, along with New Zealand’s Eleanor Catton. However, when it comes to the Australian nonfiction area, this is yet another left-wing stack, with talent drawn from the ABC, Fairfax Media, Schwartz’s Black Inc and the like.Participants include Robyn Archer, Monica Attard, Gregg Borschmann, Meredith Burgmann, Mike Carlton, Michael Cathcart, John Cleary, Robert Dessaix, Irina Dunn, Peter Fitz­Simons, Richard Flanagan, Malcolm Fraser, Clive Hamilton, Marieke Hardy, Dan Ilic, Benjamin Law, Michael Leunig, Antony Loewenstein, Marr, Julian Morrow, Linda Mottram, Henry Reynolds, Jeff Sparrow, Adam Spencer, Chris Taylor, Rodney Tiffen, Tom Tilley, Christos Tsiolkas and Andrew Upton. There is barely a conservative on the list.It’s a case of Green Left Weekly meets The Monthly. Yet, as with other like functions, this year’s SWF will be heavily subsidised by taxpayers and ratepayers. This year, the NSW government has contributed $430,000, the City of Sydney $330,000 and the Australia Council $35,000… Conferences where almost everyone agrees with almost everyone else are invariably boring. They also have the effect of distorting reality as the inner-city Left dismiss as bigoted the “they” who happen to live in suburban and regional Australia.

It would be, strictly speaking, a broken promise. The Government is banking on not enough people caring, other than those who’d never vote for it anyway - like ABC staff:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is poised to break a key election promise by cutting funding to the ABC… In a pledge his colleagues are now wishing he never made, Mr Abbott said on the night before the 2013 election: “No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS."…Fairfax Media believes one of the options involves introducing an efficiency dividend to the ABC budget – an annual funding reduction used to achieve deep and continuous cuts to government agencies… The ABC was allocated $1.03 billion in the 2013 federal budget. A 2.25 per cent efficiency dividend would see the broadcaster forced to strip around $22.5 million from its budget in the first year…The ABC is one of only three government agencies, along with SBS and Safe Work Australia, currently exempt from the efficiency dividend…It is believed the Abbott government does not consider an efficiency dividend on the ABC to be a broken promise, as nearly every other government department has one and savings need to be found across the board.

Oh dear. Could Parkinson nominate the islands where this has occurred, and where the cause is man-made warming?

Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson has told an audience in Washington it appeared inevitable that Australia would have to resettle climate change refugees in the coming decades… ‘’[It] doesn’t necessarily arise because you wake up one morning and find water around your ankles because the sea level has risen,’’ he said. ‘’We are seeing it already in some of the small island countries where you are seeing potable water degradation in fresh water wells. If climate change plays out the way scientists believe, then it will be inevitable that there will be climate change refugees in our region and it would naturally fall to Australia and New Zealand to welcome any of those because of our historic links with those countries.’’

Rising sea levels that claim land on which houses are build and invade fresh water wells and plantations pose a threat to the very existence of many people living on low lying atolls in countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu.... Tiiroi, a mother of two is a new to the settlement… The biggest difference she finds from the time she grew up a little girl is Tarawa is the scarcity of water.“There are wells in this settlement that only have salty water. Neighbours who live a little bit away from the sea allow us to get drinking water from their well,” the 27 year-old said… The President of Kiribati, Anote Tong is well aware of the challenges posed by beach erosion, sea level rise and contamination of fresh water sources to his country.

Peter Sinclair, water resources adviser at the SPC, heads a team measuring the quality of underground drinking water… However, population pressure is an issue in this discussion too, Mr Sinclair explains. “As long as we get rainfall, the system will replenish, but the population pressure encroaches on the reserve and also affects the bacterial content in the water - we have contamination from housing, agriculture, from people holding pigs, the sanitation practices,” he says.

THE BOLT REPORT13 APRIL 2014INTERVIEW WITH ERIC ABETZANDREW BOLT, PRESENTER: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says Labor should cut some of its pro-union membership rules. Why? It’s not because Labor’s union links cost Labor the last election. It’s because Shorten is trying to save Labor from its next disaster: the Royal Commission into union corruption, which started this week and will look particularly at union slush funds.JEREMY STOLJAR, Trades Union Royal Commission: There have been well-publicised reports, allegations and claims to the effect that certain union officials have set up such funds, procured money to be paid into them, and used them to pay for electioneering or other purposes.ANDREW BOLT: Joining me is Employment Minister Eric Abetz, who is also government leader in the Senate. Eric, good morning.ERIC ABETZ, EMPLOYMENT MINISTER: Good morning, and good to be in the studio.ANDREW BOLT: Same for – I’m glad you are. Eric, what does Labor have to fear from the Royal Commission?ERIC ABETZ: The dark secrets of the slush funds of the trade union movement that have often gone to assist people in their pre-selections, internal Labor ballots. These things may well come to light in the Royal Commission and then those that have been dabbling in that dark art of Labor faction fundraising and bankrolling will undoubtedly be embarrassed if these matters come to light.ANDREW BOLT: Do you think Bill Shorten has questions to answer about the AWU slush fund that was set up by Bruce Wilson in the 1990s, Wilson being then Julia Gillard’s boyfriend, with Julia Gillard’s help as a solicitor?ERIC ABETZ: I would have thought that there are a lot of questions as to whether or not Mr Shorten should have done more when he took over the Australian Workers Union to find out where those hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly disappeared to. So, they’re questions for Mr Shorten, but at the end of the day, the Royal Commission will determine what tracks to go down to ascertain which witnesses may be able to provide material evidence to assist the Royal Commission.ANDREW BOLT: Well, there was no mention of Julia Gillard in the Royal Commission’s opening day, and I should say that she denies any wrongdoing. But do you have any reason to believe that she will be questioned by the Commission?ERIC ABETZ: I’m not going to try to tell the Royal Commission how it ought to undertake its duty of fulfilling the terms of reference. But, clearly, Ms Gillard was there as a player, drawing up the power of attorney, having her fingers in theconveyancing file, and setting up the rules for this Australian Workers Union slush fund. So I think she has something to say about these matters, but whether it’s going to be considered material, that’s going to be for the Royal Commission.ANDREW BOLT: Well, Martin Ferguson, the former Gillard Government minister, said this week he’d spoken to a builder who’d done renovations for the AWU and on Gillard’s house and is prepared to give evidence to the Royal Commission. I must say Gillard says that she paid for her renovations herself. How important was that, Martin Ferguson coming forward?

It’s gruesome. It’s dramatic. It’s arguably the abortion-related story of the decade.

It's the murder trial of "House of Horrors" abortionist Kermit Gosnell. And the mainstream media is almost completely ignoring it. Last night on "Special Report," Bret Baier of Fox News listed the number of times each of the five major networks covered the capital murder trial Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor accused of murdering seven born alive babies and a patient.

“Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” - Luke 9:23-24

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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels."Psalm 22:14

Our blessed Lord experienced a terrible sinking and melting of soul. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?" Deep depression of spirit is the most grievous of all trials; all besides is as nothing. Well might the suffering Saviour cry to his God, "Be not far from me," for above all other seasons a man needs his God when his heart is melted within him because of heaviness. Believer, come near the cross this morning, and humbly adore the King of glory as having once been brought far lower, in mental distress and inward anguish, than any one among us; and mark his fitness to become a faithful High Priest, who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Especially let those of us whose sadness springs directly from the withdrawal of a present sense of our Father's love, enter into near and intimate communion with Jesus. Let us not give way to despair, since through this dark room the Master has passed before us. Our souls may sometimes long and faint, and thirst even to anguish, to behold the light of the Lord's countenance: at such times let us stay ourselves with the sweet fact of the sympathy of our great High Priest. Our drops of sorrow may well be forgotten in the ocean of his griefs; but how high ought our love to rise! Come in, O strong and deep love of Jesus, like the sea at the flood in spring tides, cover all my powers, drown all my sins, wash out all my cares, lift up my earth-bound soul, and float it right up to my Lord's feet, and there let me lie, a poor broken shell, washed up by his love, having no virtue or value; and only venturing to whisper to him that if he will put his ear to me, he will hear within my heart faint echoes of the vast waves of his own love which have brought me where it is my delight to lie, even at his feet forever.

Evening

Mention of the king's garden by Nehemiah brings to mind the paradise which the King of kings prepared for Adam. Sin has utterly ruined that fair abode of all delights, and driven forth the children of men to till the ground, which yields thorns and briers unto them. My soul, remember the fall, for it was thy fall. Weep much because the Lord of love was so shamefully ill-treated by the head of the human race, of which thou art a member, as undeserving as any. Behold how dragons and demons dwell on this fair earth, which once was a garden of delights.

See yonder another King's garden, which the King waters with his bloody sweat--Gethsemane, whose bitter herbs are sweeter far to renewed souls than even Eden's luscious fruits. There the mischief of the serpent in the first garden was undone: there the curse was lifted from earth, and borne by the woman's promised seed. My soul, bethink thee much of the agony and the passion; resort to the garden of the olive-press, and view thy great Redeemer rescuing thee from thy lost estate. This is the garden of gardens indeed, wherein the soul may see the guilt of sin and the power of love, two sights which surpass all others.

Is there no other King's garden? Yes, my heart, thou art, or shouldst be such. How do the flowers flourish? Do any choice fruits appear? Does the King walk within, and rest in the bowers of my spirit? Let me see that the plants are trimmed and watered, and the mischievous foxes hunted out. Come, Lord, and let the heavenly wind blow at thy coming, that the spices of thy garden may flow abroad. Nor must I forget the King's garden of the church. O Lord, send prosperity unto it. Rebuild her walls, nourish her plants, ripen her fruits, and from the huge wilderness, reclaim the barren waste, and make thereof "a King's garden."

Abel's name, meaning breath or vapor, is associated with the shortness of his life. What was his life but a vapor? (Ps. 90:6; Jas. 4:14 ) Abel was a shepherd and a possessor of flocks and herds; Cain was a tiller of the ground. It was not occupation, however, that parted these first two brothers in the world, but their conception of what was pleasing and acceptable to God. Abel feared God and because he did, he offered to God the best of his flock. His was a sacrifice of blood and represented the surrender of a heart to God. Cain brought what he had gathered from the earth, an offering representing his own effort. Because God accepted Abel's offering and not Cain's, the angry brother slew Abel in the field. But Abel's blood cried from the ground for punishment. Abel's blood is placed alongside Christ's shed blood ( Heb. 12:24), which is better than Abel's in that his blood cried out for vengeance but the blood of Christ cries out for mercy. Abel's blood, although the blood of a righteous man (Matt. 23:35), cannot atone, but Christ's blood is ever efficacious (1 John 1:7). Abel is unique among Bible men in a fourfold direction:

He was the first one of the human race to die. He was the first person on the earth to be murdered. He was the first man to be associated with Christ. He was the first saint to present an offering acceptable to God.

Today's reading: 1 Samuel 19-21, Luke 11:29-54 (NIV)

Saul Tries to Kill David

1 Saul told his son Jonathan and all the attendants to kill David. But Jonathan had taken a great liking to David 2 and warned him, "My father Saul is looking for a chance to kill you. Be on your guard tomorrow morning; go into hiding and stay there. 3 I will go out and stand with my father in the field where you are. I'll speak to him about you and will tell you what I find out."

4 Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul his father and said to him, "Let not the king do wrong to his servant David; he has not wronged you, and what he has done has benefited you greatly.5 He took his life in his hands when he killed the Philistine. The LORD won a great victory for all Israel, and you saw it and were glad. Why then would you do wrong to an innocent man like David by killing him for no reason?"

The Sign of Jonah

29 As the crowds increased, Jesus said, "This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. 30For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. 31 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom; and now something greater than Solomon is here. 32 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now something greater than Jonah is here....

RECONCILED!

For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again…. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:14-19)

Many theologians have thought that reconciliation may be as important a word as any other in the biblical vocabulary of salvation. It is a word from the world of human relationships. It is that wonderful thing that sometimes happens when people at enmity with each other steer a course toward each other to confess wrongdoing, to repair a rift, to make up, to set aside differences, to cease hostilities, to reconcile.

Most people don’t really believe they are at enmity with God. They think that God is quite favorably disposed toward them. After all, why wouldn’t he be? Aren’t we quite lovable the way we are?

God’s love is not infatuation or God just being “nice.” The God of love loves the unlovable with a rigorous commitment. He loves human beings who have ignored him, thought in their arrogance that they don’t really need him, and who have been gods to themselves. God’s love sees us for who we can be, not who we are.

Christ, who had no sin, stood in the place of the sinner so that the sinner could stand before God–enmity gone, opposition put aside, friends again.

And thus we bear a message of reconciliation and we have a ministry of reconciliation. In other words when people in the world think of Christians, they ought to think: oh, yes, those are the people who are passionate about peace and reconciliation. They live in it and they live for it.

Here is the question: is that what people really do see in our attitudes and values?

Jesus Teaches Nicodemus

1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him."

3 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."

4 "How can someone be born when they are old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born!"

5 Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit...."

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..